minister to allow lone parents live with someone

ronbyrne2005

as if they needed any more excuse to stay on the social welfare
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Minister for Social Affairs Séamus Brennan is planning a major overhaul of the single-parent allowance scheme next year, which is expected to abandon the "cohabitation rule" that recipients must not be living with a partner, writes Liam Reid, Political Reporter.

The move follows a report by the Department of Social and Family Affairs which indicated that between 30 and 40 per cent of people in receipt of the single-parent allowance are breaking the cohabitation rule. The report, which was brought to Cabinet before Christmas, will be launched next month as part of a public consultation in advance of the scheme's overhaul.

The report showed there were more than 80,000 families relying on the One Parent Family scheme, which the lone parents allowance is now called, at a cost of €769 million this year.

The number of people on the scheme is double that in receipt of single-parent payments 10 years ago. The report also showed that one in five children being born in Ireland are to families in receipt of single-parent social welfare payments.

The second objective of the reform will be to allow people to earn more from working without incurring a loss in social welfare. The current system is expected to be replaced by a more "family-friendly" payment regime that does not encourage unmarried parents to live apart.

Mr Brennan told The Irish Times that the planned overhaul of the scheme was part of a wider Government strategy to tackle child poverty, with upwards of 60 per cent of children at risk of poverty living in single-parent families.

"The aim of the review is to help people out of the poverty trap," he said. "Payments to families at risk of poverty shouldn't be about whether people are living together or not."

The report states that 2,000 people, or 3 per cent of the total, had their single-parent payments terminated in 2004. However, inspectors estimated the real rate of cohabitation at between 30 and 40 per cent. Mr Brennan said he believed the cohabitation rule would take inordinate resources to enforce, a move he did not believe was desirable. "I have no intention of having an army of inspectors out knocking on doors trying to enforce an 18th-century type of rule," he said. He added that he was concerned that the system was encouraging unmarried parents to remain apart, which had the danger of "building up social problems".

The review will also address the issue of allowing people in receipt of the scheme to work.

Currently parents in receipt of allowances can earn up to €12,000 per year, but they face losing most of their welfare entitlements if they go into full-time employment. Recipients also face reduced payments if they want to return to full-time education.

He said the Government had no intention of reducing the payments one-parent families were receiving, and the aim was to maintain family income while not discouraging parents from cohabiting, and enable them to return to work or return to college.

"Both nationally and socially, there are compelling reasons for tackling this area," he said. "This is not a financial issue. There will be no effect on the finances of people on single-parent allowances.

"What I want to replace it with is a family-friendly, child-centred payment aimed at low-income parents, whether they're single, married or living together." He said the report showed that claims that there were large numbers of teenage mothers reliant on social welfare was "just pub talk", with just 2.2 per cent of recipients aged under 20.

meldrew

Whats your problem with that ?
It seems like a good scheme and if it helps children in these situations to have some kind of stable home life it can only benefit society as a whole .
Its not like all the people recieving this are scroungers as you seem to imply, but most are on the breadline with little hope of getting out of the rut and something like this could make a big difference .

Hobbes

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

as if they needed any more excuse to stay on the social welfare

The report seems to imply that the reverse is true. That there is more incentive to work.

simu

meldrew wrote:

Whats your problem with that ?
It seems like a good scheme and if it helps children in these situations to have some kind of stable home life it can only benefit society as a whole .
Its not like all the people recieving this are scroungers as you seem to imply, but most are on the breadline with little hope of getting out of the rut and something like this could make a big difference .

Agreed. Sounds like a good idea.

Thomond Pk

Another move from El Berto to prove that that he is a caring pinko after all

Just what is the point in voting PD anymore?

homeOwner

meldrew wrote:

Whats your problem with that ?
It seems like a good scheme and if it helps children in these situations to have some kind of stable home life it can only benefit society as a whole .

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying. They could even be not living together anymore but as long as they give the same address to social welfare they would still get the payments. I see lots of scope for abuse.

Victor

homeOwner wrote:

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying. They could even be not living together anymore but as long as they give the same address to social welfare they would still get the payments. I see lots of scope for abuse.

The objective is to provide a stable home life for children by not discriminating against unmarried parents. The scheme will probablt save the government money, while giving more money to individuals.

Take a couple with one child. Let us say both are unemployed (the situation will be similar for employed person, but not as extreme).

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Scenario A - current

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives elsewhere.

Each parent is entitled to full unemployment benefit, the mother gets the extra between unemployment benefit and the slightly higher lone parents allowance, rent allowance (on two properties) and medical cards.

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Scenario B - current

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives with mother and child.

Parents are only entitled to only approximately 1.5 x full unemployment benefit, rent allowance (on one property) and medical cards.

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Scenario A - future

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives elsewhere.

Each parent is entitled to full unemployment benefit, the mother gets the extra between unemployment benefit and the slightly higher lone parents allowance, rent allowance (on two properties) and medical cards.

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Scenario B - future

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives with mother and child.

Each parent is entitled to full unemployment benefit, rent allowance (on one property) and medical cards.

---

Essentially the current system encourages (a) single parents to live apart to the detriment of the child, their romantic lives (& possibility of getting married) and their employment chances (primarily the mother (b) the exorbitant use of scarce resources (two properties - 2 x rent, 2 x bills)

Under the proposed scheme, for the same amount of money the government can provide people with a better standard of living.

krd

homeOwner wrote:

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying. They could even be not living together anymore but as long as they give the same address to social welfare they would still get the payments. I see lots of scope for abuse.

Maybe you don't get it that all the minister is doing is ending the charade that alot of these couples do already cohabit and inforcing the cohabitation rule is more socially destructive (and a bit of a joke). Alot of lone parents do not have the earning potential to sustain a family at the current cost of living, regardless of whether they cohabit or not.

I can never see why people complain about lone parents receiving subsidies. Considering nearly half the money spent on lone parents goes straight into the hands of nice middle class landlords.

Lone parents have done much to sustain high value in the rental sector. Think, that without their strident efforts and government subsidies, how many developments of "luxury" apartments would have fallen flat, leaving many property investors out of pocket.

Joking aside, lone parents cost you in terms of taxes less then 1p/euro. But they've always been an easy scapegoat. Their preceived fecklessness, rampant sexuality and fecundity send middle Ireland into paroxsyms (as they offend their "values"). If your looking for the source of a lot the inequities and discomforts in Ireland, you have to maybe look towards other actors that are gobbling down far larger slices of the pie.

Sponge Bob

Lone parents should get themselves a tent at the galway races every year and go respectable .

Irjudge1

homeOwner wrote:

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying.

The shame of it. Maybe they can't afford to or maybe they just don't want to get married

Thomond Pk

Having had the choice of wait for two years to save for an Irish wedding or go abroad I can see what you are saying.

Daithio

homeOwner wrote:

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying. They could even be not living together anymore but as long as they give the same address to social welfare they would still get the payments. I see lots of scope for abuse.

Reasons for new legislation not running smoothly in certain circumstances should never be a reason not to introduce the legislation in the first place. There will obviously be people abusing the system, as there are in all social welfare systems, but this is no reason to penalise everybody else. The cohabitation rule is absolutely ridiculous and it's high time that it was changed.

Victor

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

minister to allow lone parents live with someone

The title sounds sooooo benevolent, doesn't it?

Stabshauptmann

Scenario B - current

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives with mother and child.

Parents are only entitled to only approximately 1.5 x full unemployment benefit, rent allowance (on one property) and medical cards..

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Scenario B - future

Single mother with one child receiving lone parents allowance. Father lives with mother and child.

Each parent is entitled to full unemployment benefit, rent allowance (on one property) and medical cards.

---

Am I reading this right victor, under the current scheme a single parent cohabiting revieves more money than they will under the new scheme?
(1.5 x Full > Full)

And there is no change if they dont cohabit.
If thats right then it currently encourages cohabitation and wont in the future.

Victor

Kaptain Redeye wrote:

Am I reading this right victor, under the current scheme a single parent cohabiting revieves more money than they will under the new scheme?(1.5 x Full > Full)

No, you have that wrong. The 2 parents between them get only about 1.5 time what they would each get if they lived separately and their landlords do better aswell.

Lord Spence

Has this happened yet, when is this change coming into affect.

shoegirl

krd wrote:

I can never see why people complain about lone parents receiving subsidies. Considering nearly half the money spent on lone parents goes straight into the hands of nice middle class landlords.

Lone parents have done much to sustain high value in the rental sector. Think, that without their strident efforts and government subsidies, how many developments of "luxury" apartments would have fallen flat, leaving many property investors out of pocket.

Joking aside, lone parents cost you in terms of taxes less then 1p/euro. But they've always been an easy scapegoat. Their preceived fecklessness, rampant sexuality and fecundity send middle Ireland into paroxsyms (as they offend their "values"). If your looking for the source of a lot the inequities and discomforts in Ireland, you have to maybe look towards other actors that are gobbling down far larger slices of the pie.

Well put. But I don't think that "rent allowance" tenants have contributed much to putting up the price of "luxury" apartments. Most low income and social welfare tenants live in poor quality accomodation - much of the "high" end of "luxury" rental accomodation is taken up by mobile workers, many of them migrant workers, who share homes.

However it does seem to me to be a contradiction in terms: surely the whole point of "lone parent" payments is to subsidise those who do not have a second adult supporting them. A great many one parent families get no support from the fathers of their children/ex spouses/non live-in partners, even where there is a good relationship. The very existence of the one parent family payments seems to exhonerate many of these guys from having to pay for their own kids. Simply allowing the partner to live in doesn't guarantee that he (or in these days, sometimes she) is going to support the children, whether he works or not.

I think however, an expansion of the FIS scheme to guarantee a minimum payments to lone parents regardless of work status (or better still, to give more to those who work - rather like the original intention of the UK New Deal - to make work pay) would achieve the same thing. At the same time it would be important not to discriminate against married couples with one spouse or no spouse working - all should get the same payment.

Lord Spence

so when is this change happening ??????????

rsynnott

homeOwner wrote:

It could encourage couples not to get married at all once they have kids. They will get money for not marrying. They could even be not living together anymore but as long as they give the same address to social welfare they would still get the payments. I see lots of scope for abuse.

The benefit surely outweighs the potential for abuse?

Lord Spence

Will someone please answer my question PLEASE !!!!